Whew! It's been a while since my last foray into the crazy world of Danganronpa, but I finally finished this odd little over-the-shoulder shooter spin off entry with puzzle mechanics and it only took me over 2 years!
That doesn't look... um... appropriate
If you've never played the first game and care about avoiding ANY spoilers, I would recommend staying far away from this game. Don't even look at the cover art as it reveals a lot of what will happen in the first game. But don't leave! I won't get into any of it and I was very deliberate in choosing the screenshots.
No shitty, hit-and-run shocking spoilers in this blog!
I usually play shooters exclusively on the PC with mouse+keyboard but I got used to this game enough to enjoy it. The shooting mechanic is slower paced and deliberate than the typical shooter. So much so, I would just categorize this as an action game with shooting and puzzle mechanics. There are a bunch of puzzle type rooms where you can defeat all the enemies in one fell swoop if you use the various bullets the "correct" way. These bullets are unlocked throughout the game though you get a sneak preview of all of them in the beginning.
The only part I didn't like was the lack of frequent save points. These save points are actually portable potties called omaru in Japanese, which sounds similar to Komaru, the main character. Anyway, it was annoying to play a portable game that you can't easily turn off at any time.
Nothing more relaxing than taking a BIG dump
Speaking of portable, the graphics look amazing on the Vita (incoming switch whiners alert!!) and the settings are the usual colorful Danganronpa style. I especially loved the nice touches for the super stylized fire and swirling sewage water.
Even sewage water looks attractive. Nice water.
Some might say that the Kamaitachi no Yoru style for all the adult characters reeks of laziness but I dunno. If it's all the same to you, I appreciated not seeing a disturbing pile of detailed corpses, personally.
This probably would have been Cero Z if not "abstracted"
The 3D characters for the main cast looked great and transitioned very well from the 2D paper Mario style of the first two games, especially Komaru. And no matter how much it tries to paint her as just an average, regular JK, I just don't buy it. I don't care what the game says, but Komaru is HAWT. Not to mention the fact that unless some genetic engineering dramatically change the average Japanese girl's anatomy in the game universe, her boob size is definitely NOT average.
Game includes profiles of all the characters with measurements (84 cm bust here)
Besides the graphics (great) and gameplay (ok), the real highlight, as you would expect from Danganronpa, is the story. I'm genuinely surprised that this didn't get censored in the West as some of the subject matter is shall we say... highly politically sensitive? Even though nothing is explicitly explained nor shown, it's still extremely touchy especially when it pertains to children (argh, phrasing!).
First game I ever played that actually has the balls to say "child porn". Argh, once again, phrasing!
But putting aside all the crazy, taboo shit, I thought the final chapter was really, really good. It went in a direction I didn't expect and I really enjoyed the plot overall as well as the character development, even though the latter was more orthodox.
The music for the series seems to be getting better and better as this one had my favorite soundtrack so far. Though the list of songs wasn't quite as long and varied as I would have liked, I'm still humming "yeah yeah yeah" as it's damn catchy. Good stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh uh uh
The Danganronpa series has been a sleeper "HIDDEN GEM!!!" hit in the west so all the games are fully localized. Obviously, as a Jhipster, I can only scoff at the English voice acting and lame localization. There is a riddle in the game that uses wordplay about a gunman breaking dishes. Because "gun"（銃） is a homonym for "ten" and 割る not only means "break" but also "divide", the answer is to divide by ten. Unfortunately, none of that makes sense in English so here's NISA's stupid answer to the "riddle".
Ugh, so forced and stupid. English is lame #weeaboo
Score: 4 this makes Lord of the Flies sound so tame out of 5 (20 hours recorded but probably around 25 with resets)
Objectively, this one is a 3.5 above-average game and just a 3 average in the gameplay department. It would be a stretch to say that this spinoff was better than the first two main entries. But I dunno, I just really liked the last chapter and felt really satisfied at the end. So I'm going to just go with my gut and stick with 4 as a great game. No, it has nothing to do with how cute Komaru is... not even a smidgen... mostly... I mean, got dayum, she's HAWT! My score is probably not what the typical Shitaku crowd would agree with but what do they know? Jack squat, that's what.
Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely
スーパーダンガンロンパ2 さよなら絶望学園 (Super Danganronpa 2 Goodbye Despair Academy) known to non-Jhipsters as just "Goodbye despair" or "Happy Trigger Havoc 2" if you're a fake gamer on youtube who spends all your time trying to squeeze money from suckers online *COUGH* MJR *COUGH*, is umm ok so this is turning into a huge run-on sentence so let me try again. AHEM
Before I begin, there's not going to be any spoiler in terms of story here but I should point out that if you haven't played Danganronpa 1, you really should before playing the sequel. While not unplayable, you're pretty much gonna ruin the first game but really do I even need to say this? Like who skips straight to the end? Oh right, kids these days with their let's plays and instant gratification...
To cut straight to the chase, this game is paced far worse than it's predecessor. It really reminded me of that TV show Lost because I watched like maybe half of the first season, a quarter of season 2, then the last episode and I felt like I totally saved myself hours upon hours of puffed up suspense and fake cliffhangers. Ok ok, relax, this game is not even close to being as bad as Lost but the whole middle half of the game was a total drag.
In addition, I wasn't a big fan of the new trial mini-games. Rebuttal showdown was ESPECIALLY annoying. I'm not even sure how that worked on the PSP, as the analog controls were horrible on the VitaTV and I really needed to swipe on the touchscreen. Logical dive was also meh, I mean it was a tolerable, crappy snowboarding game. At least they simplified what used to be the tedious part of piecing together the crime in comic form.
Not a fan of this genre... I guess this is how non-fans of rhythm games felt
I feel like they tried too hard on adding more unnecessary gameplay elements in the trials, which ultimately didn't add much to the game. At the same time, they kept the flow of each chapter exactly the same as the predecessor: free time (presents ugh) → murder → investigation → trial. I mean it was ok in the first game but after a combined 70 hours of this across both games, you can't help but wish they changed up the formula a bit.
Besides the meh gameplay changes, the graphics are pretty much the same style except the environments are much more interesting and varied compared to the claustrophobic being trapped in a school setting.
Amazingly, Titty Typhoon apparently wasn't censo- ahem, edited for content.
You gain experience by walking of all things and of course, there's a trophy that would require TONS of grinding (ie walking) which sorry, I'm gonna pass on. Your Level doesn't seem to affect anything except maybe serve as a parody of other games. Speaking of parody, the plot in this game takes the already far-fetched, crazy setting of the first game and brings it up a notch. There are a lot of references to other games and playful 4th wall breaking. I mean for crying out loud, there's a rabbit mascot in a murder game though surprisingly, this game came out only 5 months after Virtue's Last Reward so... coincidence?
I played this bonus game like twice and I was like, meh, I have better things to do.
Overall, I had as much fun as the first game. It was easy to play and even though there was a huge drag in the middle, things finally did get interesting at the end. There were a couple plot points that were kinda disappointing but unlike Lost, it did explain everything though it was probably easier given the crazy nature of the game setting.
I liked the music a bit more this time around with a couple of tracks I actually liked. For example, the song for the end credits was pretty good.
More electric guitar is always a good thing
Score: 3.5 (+.5 mandatory bonus for Hanazawa Kana) oh god, they added an annoying rabbit on top of the annoying bear out of 5 (41 hours to beat)
There's more extras in this game as well, including the Miracle Monomi mini game (pictured above), which... whatever. However, a nice bonus is an alternate IF story of Danganronpa 1 in text form. I do intend on reading that at some point.
Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely
ダンガンロンパ 希望の学園と絶望の高校生 (Danganronpa Acadamy of hope and high school student of despair) or known to non-Jhipsters as "Happy Trigger Havoc" was on my radar for a while. When it got re-released bundled with the sequel for the Vita as "Danganronpa 1・2 Reload", I decided it was finally time to pull the trigger (oh god, sorry about the pun but it just slipped out).
Of course this game didn't have a chance in hell of making it out of Japan when it was originally released on the PSP in 2010. Maybe if it was on the DS and rebranded as "Phoenix Wright Origins: The Lost Chapters of Despair!" I mean after all, both games are about murders and trials and Ace Attorney even has red blood instead of the pepto-bismol censored stuff in Danganronpa.
If you think about it, Ace Attorney is just as violent yet somehow it's all just laughs and giggles
But times are a changin ie Vita isn't getting pirated like a cruise ship lost in Somalia. I think the fact that the entire series getting localized and still going strong for a 3rd entry really speaks to the success of the long tail niche markets with social media internet marketing. (OH LOOK AT ME! I'M SO SMART!)
I don't own the original PSP version of the game but I'm pretty sure the Vita version is pretty much the same save for the god awful load grinding like a awkward teenager at an 18+ club and wet tissue paper durability of the UMD disc of course. Well, at least the PSP version comes with a manual with tactile functionality made from some amazing Egyptian invention with papyrus plants.
Apparently this is what passes for manuals nowadays (0 pages)
Anyways, ah hem, the Vita version comes with the original demo as well that is pretty much a trimmed down version of the first murder. The cool thing about the demo is *SPOILER ALERT* it sets up the stage making you think the main love interest is the cute idol girl. *SPOILER ALERT* Suffice it to say, the main game is not quite the same as the demo.
I approve of the character design. God, I'm such a sucker aren't I?
As for the game itself, I thought it was easy to play and fun overall. I liked the character designs and the mysteries were interesting. My only real complaint is the lack of voice acting between trials. Yes, the trials were fully voiced but as an American, reading all those lines of dialogue in between the trials was a bit annoying.
The music was memorable but personally it wasn't my kind of thing. I guess it did a good job as a game soundtrack but I'm not gonna listen to it by itself.
OST was ok I guess, just not my kind of thing
The game definitely starts out pretty slow as they are just so many characters to talk to especially when they're all in one room. There were times when I just got tired of trying to find the right presents from the gacha machine and talking to random people during the free times. It's not like you're going to unlocked rich backstories for most of the characters. I spent a lot of time with the swimmer and I think I learned that she liked doughnuts. (I dunno, it's been a while.)
Hey, I know how to swim too, wanna go out?
The game definitely picks up as you have less and less people to talk to. I just liked doing the investigation and the trials, really. The trials were definitely more dynamic compared to Ace Attorney as you have to shoot moving words. It also has parts where you select evidence like AA and even a mini-rhythm game. Sure the logic got a little, shall we say, vague near the end but the game was friendly enough to replay whatever you failed. The ending was very satisfying and you can't get those awesome death sequences on the DS.
LONG LIVE THE PSP!!!
Score: 3 god that bear is annoying though out of 5 (30 hours to beat)
Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely
